Feeling The Elite Beat: Keiichi Yano On Crossing Over

Microsoft's Gamefest event, held in
August in Seattle, attracted large numbers of developers to come and
learn more about Xbox 360 and Games for Windows. The vast majority,
of course, were U.S.-based developers -- but a few foreign faces did
show up.

One of those was Keiichi Yano, CCO, designer and co-founder of iNiS,
creators of the iconic, Nintendo-published music game Elite Beat
Agents for the Nintendo DS - and he shared his thoughts
on the sudden popularity of the rhythm genre, issues in internationalizing
game appeal, and the best places to get advice on development technique,
among other topics.

So, the obvious question is, why
are you at Gamefest?

Keiichi Yano: That's probably the biggest
question I can't answer, but I guess there is an obvious answer, and
a not-so-obvious answer. We've always been Xbox developers. A lot of
people don't know this, but we've been doing graphics engines and game
engines on 360 for awhile now.

You're talking about your rendering
engine, nFactor2?

KY: Right, right. And we've been extending
that all the time. It's cross-platform right now. It's just really continuing
on that vector -- that was really the main reason I was here.

Could you go a little into what
nFactor2 is about?

KY: Yeah, it's basically our rendering
engine and our game development platform. It encompasses the main rendering
engine, and the tools surrounding it. It's really our basis for creating
all the games that we build.

You spoke to Gamasutra's Simon Carless
before Tokyo Game Show last year. There was an allusion to a 360 project.
Is that something that's still in the works and something you're still
looking at?

KY: Yeah. We are currently working
on a title. I can't really get into it more than, "Yes, we're working
on something!"

Elite Beat Agents and its
Japan-only predecessor Ouendan have
a casual appeal -- they're easy to play.
The casual market is a big deal right now. Is that where you guys want
to focus, or are you doing a variety of different titles?

KY: Since we're in the music games
genre, music games lend themselves to a more casual market. The fact
that we're doing that -- yeah, we're primarily already in that market,
and a couple of things we're working on right now are definitely geared
towards that market. I would say that in a nutshell -- yes.

Reggie Fils-Aime made a comment
saying that Elite Beat Agents didn't perform as well as
he'd personally hoped. But at the same time, if you look at the success
of Guitar Hero, obviously music games have real mainstream potential.
What do you think about the growth of the genre in the U.S.?

KY: I think with regards to the U.S.
-- as well as Europe, actually -- music games will probably continue
to be very big and will probably outgrow their current market status
right now. Everybody's really looking forward to titles like Rock
Band, and SingStar for PlayStation 3, and there are other
titles in the works I'm sure that are probably fairly massive compared
to what's been available for music games up until now. So yeah, I definitely
think so.

But one of the things I would say to
that, is that I'm very concerned about the quality of the music games
that are coming out and will come out, because again, I do feel as though
it's kind of a special genre that requires specific knowledge of music
and what makes music fun. Hopefully, the games that come out that are
in that genre can take advantage of all that and do all those things
right, and make sure that it's a really fun experience so that the genre
itself can stay strong and not have a lot of bad clutter in it.